Cirque Olympique
The Cirque Olympique was a circus institution in Paris in the 19th century . It was run by a family of equestrians from Venice named Franconi . The Cirque Olympique was housed in three buildings one after the other.
First building
Antoine Franconi had built the Amphithéâtre Anglais in Paris since 1782 together with Philip Astley , the London “inventor” of the circus . The aftermath of the French Revolution forced Astley to sell the company to Franconi in 1793. Franconi's sons Laurent and Henri were able to escape the ban on their circus activities in the wake of the Napoleonic theater decree of 1807 by successfully arguing that the circus was not a theater at all. With the birth of the Cirque Olympique , the circus was separated from the theater. Nevertheless, theater-like performances remained part of the circus programs for a long time.
The first building stood on Rue Saint-Honoré in the garden of the Capuchin monastery and was in use from 1807 to 1816. Here the Franconi brothers produced a conventional circus program with the emphasis on horse training, but also, as was common in the circus at the time, spectacle pieces and pantomimes . From 1807, an elephant named Baba became famous there. A white stag named Coco has starred in dramas such as Acteon changé en Cerf (1811) by Jean Baptiste Augustin Hapdé or Le pont infernal (1812) by Henri Franconi. The highlight of these pieces was a hunt with dogs through painted backdrops, which put the trained stag to the test.
Second building
The second room was located on rue du Faubourg du Temple in the former amphitheater designed by Philip Astley between 1817 and 1826. In 1825 the horse drama Mazeppa after Lord Byron was staged here, which was copied throughout Europe. The wooden building was destroyed on March 16, 1826 by fire on the occasion of the pyrotechnic spectacle L'Incendie des Salins . ("The fire of Salins-les-Bains 1825" - it was customary to recreate current catastrophes in the theater.)
Third building
The third, stone-built building was opened on Boulevard du Temple in 1827 and existed there until the theater district was demolished in 1862. The Cirque Olympique was the north-western building in a row with the Théâtre des Folies-Dramatiques , the Théâtre de la Gaîté and the Théâtre des Funambules , the so-called Parisian boulevard theaters . The theater was in the shape of a parallelogram. The roof was made of cast iron, the stage could already be isolated from the auditorium by an iron curtain . Instead of a parquet there was an arena for equestrian games. There were three rows of boxes and four galleries. In 1841 the hall accommodated 1,800 people.
Battle paintings were staged here as horse theater , which Napoleon Bonaparte still glorified after the July Revolution of 1830 , but without being allowed to be named. The second mainstay of the theater were big holidays . In 1831, the pantomime Les lions de Mysore marked the beginning of carnivore training in the circus, for which the Franconi brothers hired the trainer Henri Martin . The phenomenal clown and acrobat Jean-Baptiste Auriol also worked here.
In 1835 Laurent Franconi included the equestrian François Baucher in the management. The house was sold in 1847 due to economic problems. After the end of the February Revolution in 1848 , the composer Adolphe Adam opened it as an opera house , but could no longer fill it with an audience.
Laurent and Henri Franconi both died in 1849 as victims of a cholera epidemic .
Cirque d'été
During the summertime, since 1835, performances have taken place in a lighter, round, wooden circus building on the avenue des Champs-Élysées , also called the Cirque Olympique . It was run by Henri's son Adolphe Franconi together with Louis Dejean. In 1841, according to plans by Jakob Ignaz Hittorff, it was replaced by a stone building called the Cirque d'été . 1844–45 Hector Berlioz conducted a number of large orchestral concerts here due to the good acoustics .
The Cirque d'hiver was built in 1852 to replace the winter venue on Boulevard du Temple .
literature
- The National Circus in the Champs-Elysées . In: Illustrirte Zeitung . No. 24 . J. J. Weber, Leipzig December 9, 1843, p. 380-381 ( books.google.de ).
- André Degaine: Guide des promenades théâtrales à Paris. Nizet, Saint-Genouph 1999 ISBN 2-7078-1278-1 p. 98
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Joel Schechter (Ed.): Popular theater: a sourcebook , London: Routledge 2003, pp. 26-27. ISBN 0-415-25830-8
- ↑ Histoire des théâtres et des pompiers , 2008 (accessed on February 16, 2010)
- ^ Karl Moritz Grimm: The tourist guide in Paris , new edition, Paris and Leipzig: Renouard 1841, p. 43.
- ↑ On enterre aussi les clowns: histoire du cirque vue par les cimetières , Cimetières de France et d'ailleurs of February 12, 2008 (accessed on February 17, 2010)